From the Faith Community of Saint Sabina, an emailed reminder:
Tavis Smiley will be at the church Saturday, 5/21 to discuss his new book, Fail Up. Mr. Smiley will be here from 12 pm to 2 pm. in McMahon Hall.
It was on Smiley’s show that Fr. Pfleger made the public statement that if he could not preach at St. Sabina, he would do so at Protestant churches.
I want to try to stay in the Catholic Church. If they say You either take this principalship of (Leo High) or pastorship there or leave, then Ill have to look outside the church. I believe my calling is to be a pastor. I believe my calling is to be a voice for justice. I believe my calling is to preach the Gospel. In or out of the church, Im going to continue to do that.
That did it for Cardinal George, who suspended him.
In today’s e-blast, Tom Roeser expatiates on possible pseudo-solution to the Card. George-Fr. Pfleger impasse. (The ball is in P’s “corner,” says Card. G., who is not good at sports terminology.) Roeser speculates that it will be dissolved in a splurge of ecclesiastical realpolitik and takes a shot at an agreeement:
Q. Not that you have a glimmer of what a possible settlement would be?
A. I don’t. But suppose…just suppose… there comes an offer for Pfleger to head up a newly created archdiocesan office of Social Justice…so he could visit a number of parishes and do variants of his St. Sabina’s act with a hand mike where he bounced off the walls imitating Hillary Clinton. Wouldn’t that be ducky?
No, no, no. Wldn’t fly with Fr. P., unless (maybe) he could live at St. S. and preach there on Sundays. The extra-St. Sabina stuff he does is ancillary. He’s married to the parish — which he never calls a parish, preferring church or congregation or faith community, because (I say) parish says unit of archdiocese, which has no place in P’s playbook. And he considers divorce immoral.
In St. S. he has a stable home, a place to belong to, where he can feel the love. He will not go gently into the dark night of unaffiliation. In my opinion.
First, it’s Bob’s own credentials for limiting Cardinal George’s authority in this case, Bob being an enthusiastic proponent of new limitations on bishops’ authority in general. Indeed, the Pfleger case fits his predilection for espousing radical change in the church.
Second, he (rightly) praises Pfleger’s pastoral availability to the bereaved and suffering — a combination of high profile achieved by Pfleger himself and Pfleger’s abundant empathy. But nothing in his transfer from St. Sabina would interfere with that, even work as president of a high school. He could be equally available to bereaved and badly treated people.
Third, he says the cardinal has handled this badly, to which I ask, Pfleger hasn’t?
There was a time — I remember it well — when a piece like this on Fr. Pfleger, wholly sympathetic to his staying at St. Sabina’s, would not have run without comment by Cardinal George, or lacking that, explanation that he was not available, etc.
Give Manya Brachear a column, already, and even then urge on her once-standard journalistic practices.
Questioning whether Francis George’s is “the keenest crozier at the conclave,” he recalls the great man’s initial meeting with psychiatrist Sara Charles, Kennedy’s wife.
“I’ve looked into your book” — Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America — “and I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”
“It’s too Jungian,” George began, but my wife cut him off: “There is nothing Jungian in it. It’s based on the work of the Catholic philosopher, Yves Simon.”
“It is?” the startled George replied but did not wait for an answer.
[It’s a 1997 book, co-authored by Kennedy, by the way. We take Kennedy’s word for the implications here; he does not say when it happened or in what circumstances. Not a receiving line, we must presume, for instance.]
Law — who, as his great patron put him in line to become archbishop of Chicago as soon as he heard that Cardinal Bernardin had a fatal illness — “went into exile.”
I guess so, but remaining on six powerful Roman congregations, being in charge of a prestigious basilica and living in splendid apartments does not sound like Elba to most people.
[Yes. Law blew it in Boston, got transferred (in style) to the home office. George can’t or won’t get this.]
Asked if he was surprised that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elected president of the U.S. bishops’ conference over then-vice president Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas,
thereby breaking the conference’s tradition of selecting its outgoing vice-president as its new president, George cuts right to the chase: “Yes and no.”
Oh my. Painful to watch.
[As Gene K. presents it. But the rest of what George said is important here, which I failed to check. Sloppily. After the easily criticized “yes and no,” George:
I expected [the election] to be very close, but . . . had assumed the custom would be followed. . . . The discussion [about the election] was going on [among the bishops], and we [he and Kicanas] knew it. It was fed by many factors, which have been analyzed and discussed. Some interpreted it ideologically, but I don’t know there’s that much ideological difference. Some saw it in terms of different eras – new bishops and old bishops. Obviously, Bishop Kicanas has the capacity and the personality to be president of our conference, and so does Archbishop Dolan. Maybe some bishops simply thought, since both are worthy candidates, why should we be bound by a rule we didn’t make?
[This last sentence makes no sense that I can see, but at least he didn’t let it go at “yes and no.” He also defended Kicanas as working “extraordinarily” hard at coordinating bishops’ committees, which is fair enough. All in all, his remarks on this matter were forthcoming enough, if not persuasive.
[As for his wanting to study and read more in retirement, it was a relaxed interview and he was candid in a personal matter. Retirement? That’s the biggest issue raised in the whole article. Does he mean to do so at 75, in a year?]
Blithe Spirit 